Average Rating: 
Rating: - Entertaining and Somewhat Useful
Malcolm Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point to explain why small things often cause an idea, product, tv show, book, etc. to suddenly become somewhat popular.Gladwell tells us that epidemics are caused or changed by seemingly small or unrelated things; by epidemics he usually means fads, but sometimes means cultural changes or true epidemics. He says that they are affected by a relatively few number of people (social butterflies, experts and salesmen), the "stickiness factor" (how interesting or contagious the actual thing being transmitted is) and the power of context (external factors). The best part of the book is Gladwell's writing style. He writes this serious non-fiction book in a very light, conversational, almost stream of consciousness style. While writing about a general topic to explain his points, Gladwell interrupts himself to give anecdotes to support all his points. These anecdotes are always interesting--there is not a single fad or epidemic that he discusses that did not hold my attention--even if they do not always support the larger point he is making. Therefore, no matter what you think of his arguments, after you read this book, you will be intellectually stimulated and have a lot of information about subjects as random as suicide rates in the South Pacific and Hush Puppies. The weak point is that Gladwell is obviously overselling the idea that he has come up with something novel. Hard sciences and, in mathematics, chaos theory long ago figured out that little things can make a surprisingly big difference in almost unrelated events. We instinctively know all these things about human society as well. We all know that some people know everyone and transmit their views to everyone they know. We all know that some people are great salesmen or are experts in arcane things and that these people have great influence. We all know in our lives that small almost random tweaks can make the difference between an idea or product succeeding and failing. We've all seen that adding color or changing a pie chart to a bar chart, etc. can make the difference in a presentation for work or that adding or subtracting a character on TV can make the difference (look at what a difference an actress cutting her hair made on the TV show "Felicity"). Nevertheless, Gladwell does a great job of assigning words to all these things that we know by instinct. And we can ignore the fact that he is a classic "salesman" and is trying to make us believe that he has come up with new ideas rather than a new vocabulary and interesting anecdotes.
Rating:  - Highly informative, deeply engrossing, excellent writing
If you are like this reviewer, you are skeptical of best-selling books with catchy titles that seem to explain a huge range of phenomena with a simple formula. The Tipping Point may appear to be such a book. However, Malcolm Gladwell's excellent articles overcame my resistance and led to the discovery of a book rich in intriguing ideas and details that may indeed explain a surprising range of cultural and market-based behavior. Gladwell makes no hard claims for the scientific nature of his views, although he draws on plenty of published psychological and marketing research. The core idea is that a small but precisely targeted push can create a fashion trend, the outsize success of a new product, or a major drop in the crime rate. Most of the ideas in this book have clear application to marketing, and others to effective decision-making at many levels of business. Traditional economics, which revolves around an idealistic model of rational agents, has done a fairly poor job of providing practical uses for business and has been under attack from more psychologically realistic sources. Gladwell's book is a worthy addition to this corrective literature.
Starting with the compelling story of Paul Revere's remarkably effective nighttime ride warning of imminent British military activity, Gladwell introduces three rules of epidemics explored in depth in subsequent chapters: The Law of the Few (Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen), The Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. The book elegantly and compellingly weaves these rules through discussions of diverse events and cultural epidemics, from New York crime and the revival of Hush Puppies to the popularity of Sesame Street and Airwalk sneakers and the causes of teenage smoking and suicide epidemics. Not every strand of thought of completely convincing, but the quality of discussion is high, assuming that Gladwell has accurately represented the research on which he draws. This book makes for a fascinating read with a high "stickiness factor" and probably contains more actionable strategic and marketing ideas than most hardcore business books.
Rating: - Epidemics as an Analogy for Systems Dynamics
Although this book focuses on tipping points, it is really about systems dynamics -- how related phenomena build on each other in feedback loops (for example, adding food to the environment for rapidly growing species, expands their populations). This subject is an essential part of books like The Fifth Discipline, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, The Dance of Change, and The Soul at Work. Because the book never makes that connection to systems dynamics, most readers won't either. That's a problem because you will need the tools from these other resources to apply this book's thesis of pushing the tipping point.For people who are interested in how to start (or stop) trends, this book is a useful encapsulation of much of the best and most provocative behavioral research in recent years. Unless you follow this subject closely (someone the author would call a Maven), you will find that much of this is new to you. On the other hand, if you have been involved in the marketing of trendy items or stopping medical epidemics, this will seem very elementary and old hat. I found the book to be a pleasant and quick read of how behaviors move from equilibrium into disequilibrium, caused by some factor that creates the tipping point to expand or decrease the behavior. I suspect you will, too. If you want to apply these lessons, you will probably find the book's explanation of the concepts to be just a little too general for your real needs. A good related book to fill in your sense of how human behavior works is Influence by Robert Cialdini. Essentially, the book's thesis is that trends grow by expanding the base of those who will spread the word of mouth and be listened to, aided by powerful messages that stick indelibly into the mind and an environment that psychologically encourages the trend. The weakness of that argument is that it fails to fully address the physical needs that might be served to support the trend. Sure, psychology is important, but so is physiology. To the author's credit, the examples clearly deal with physiology (such as the smoking and children's television sections), but the book's thesis does not really do so. It is a strange omission. I think some people will be confused about what to do as a result. Clearly, this book is about identifying what causes behavior through careful measurement. The examples are especially interesting because the common sense causes are seldom the right ones. For example, some children do not seem to pay much attention to a given educational television show while they play with toys. Actually, these children are picking up as much information from the show as those that do pay undivided attention, because no more than partial attention is needed for these viewers. This reminds me of the lessons about human behavior in the beer game example in The Fifth Discipline where role-playing beer retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers willy-nilly over order and over produce beer because of misinterpreting a temporary shortage as a permanent one, creating a long-term disaster for all concerned. The obvious is often obviously wrong. Anyone applying these ideas needs to develop those causation-finding measurement skills. Since the book does not provide much guidance beyond examples of successfully and unsuccessfully using them, about all you can hope for is to remember to get expert help and double check the expert's conclusions with measurements. Almost any reader will get a few great stories to use at the next cocktail party or dinner, assuming your companions have not yet read this book. Have fun!
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